J.A. Hunsinger - Guest Post

Today I have the extreme pleasure of welcoming J.A. Hunsinger, author of Axe of Iron: The Settlers, to Cafe of Dreams. Read a bit about Mr. Hunsinger's adventure into Vikings Age - such a fascinating and enjoyable glimpse into another time and place! Tomorrow I will be posting my review for Axe of Iron, as I am lucky enough to have Mr. Hunsinger stop back by on his Pump Up Your Book Promotional Tour!

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~~J.A. Hunsinger Guest Post~~

Beginning in 1982 I visited the newly discovered Viking Age town beneath the old town area of modern York, England. I spent two weeks at that dig before travelling north up the English coast to Lindesfarne, where the Viking Age began in 793 with the raid on the medieval Abbey on the island. My travel continued up the coast of Scotland where I visited every museum that displayed Viking Age artifacts. All told I have spent 1 1/2 months in England alone visiting known Viking Age sites and museums displaying the artifacts of the period. In 2004 I visited L 'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, Canada, its museum and nearby medieval Viking sites, and their complete reenactment Viking Village. In 2005 I spent three weeks touring Quebec, Canada, visiting the rural areas that I write about in my first two novels, to give myself the correct sense of place. In 2007 I spent four weeks touring Viking Age towns, sites, and national museums in Denmark, including Roskilde Fjord Ship Museum, Stockholm, including Gamla Uppsala, the University of Uppsala, Gåvle and the University of Sweden there, Helsinki, its waterfront ship displays and nearby Viking Age sites and museums, and Oslo, including the Viking Ship Museum, the University of Oslo, the national museum and numerous sites in and around Oslo proper and the Vestfold Fjord. In July 2009 I have reservations at Thunder Bay, Ontario to continue my topographical research for books #3 and #4. On the way I will view the Kensington Rune Stone, in the museum at Alexandria, MN. While at Thunder Bay I will visit the small town of Beardmore, near Lake Nipigon, to view the site where Norse weapons were discovered and then I will visit Toronto to actually view the artifacts at the Universtity of Toronto.

The entire premise of my novels is that the Greenland Norse people did not disappear, rather they gradually assimilated with the pre-historical Indians that they contacted. The Axe of Iron series begins in southern Hudson Bay. Norse artifacts have been discovered, and are continuing to be discovered, from Ungava Bay in northern Quebec all the way down to James Bay, the site of my characters settlement, so the Greenland Norse were definitely there. I used all of this archaeological data to develop my Axe of Iron series. The series is continuous, each beginning where the preceding book ended. By the time the tale is told, my characters will have visited every place on this continent where the Norse have been suspected, and/or proven, to have been. Within this dim trail left here more than 1000-years ago are the bones of my novels.

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Now, a bit about the man behind the words.....

J. A. Hunsinger lives in Colorado, USA, with his wife Phyllis. The first novel of his character-driven, historical fiction series, Axe of Iron: The Settlers, represents his first serious effort to craft the story of a lifelong interest in the Viking Age—especially as it pertains to Norse exploration west of Iceland—and extensive research and archaeological site visitations as an amateur historian. He has tied the discovery of many of the Norse artifacts found on this continent to places and events portrayed in his novels.

Much of his adult life has been associated with commercial aviation, both in and out of the cockpit. As an Engineering Technical Writer for Honeywell Commercial Flight Systems Group, Phoenix, AZ, he authored two comprehensive pilots’ manuals on aircraft computer guidance systems and several supplemental aircraft radar manuals. His manuals were published and distributed worldwide to airline operators by Honeywell Engineering, Phoenix, AZ. He also published an article, Flight Into Danger, in Flying Magazine, (August 2002).

Historical Novel Society, American Institute of Archaeology, Canadian Archaeology Association, and IBPA-Independent Book Publishers Association, are among the fraternal and trade organizations in which he holds membership.

You can visit his website at http://www.vinlandpublishing.com/.

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Curious about the book yet?! Here's a teaser:

The first novel of a continuing character-driven tale of a medieval people whose wanderlust and yearning for adventure cause them to leave the two established settlements on Greenland and sail west, to the unexplored land later referred to as Vinland.

Eirik the Red established Eiriksfjord in 986 and later Lysufjord, 400-miles to the north. Just 22-years later, new settlers from the homelands found all the best land already occupied, the fragile Arctic environment strained by too many people and animals on too little arable land.
Under the capable leadership of Halfdan Ingolfsson and his lieutenant, Gudbjartur Einarsson, 315 men, women, and children set sail from Greenland in the spring of 1008, bound for the unexplored continent across the western ocean.

Standing in their way are uncounted numbers of indigenous people, the pre-historical ancestors of the Cree (Naskapi), Ojibwa (Anishinabeg), and Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Indians. From the outset, these native people strenuously resist the incursion of these tall, pale-skinned invaders.
Two calamitous events occur that pave the way for the hostile beginnings of an assimilation process to occur between these disparate peoples. The way is rocky and fraught with danger at every turn, but the acceptance and friendship that develops between the Northmen and the Naskapi over an affair of honor, the eventual acceptance of a young boy of the Northmen by his Haudenosaunee captors, and a scenario that seems ordained by the will of the gods, makes it all begin to fall into place, as it must for the Northmen to survive.

See the saga unfold, in this first book of the Axe of Iron series, through the eyes of the characters as each day brings a continuation of the toil, love, hardship, and danger that they come to expect in this unforgiving new land.